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711. Fire Water: Technologies, Institutions, and Social Issues in Arms Control and Transboundary Water-Resource Agreements

Author:
Aaron T. Wolf, Peter H. Gleick, Elizabeth L. Chalecki, Kelli L. Larson, and Arian L. Pregenzer
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
The world of environmental security is bringing the science of natural resources in ever-closer contact with the policy issues of international stability and foreign affairs. Many U.S. and international agencies—including the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the Southern African Development Community— now analyze foreign policy in part through the lens of environmental resources. In October 2001, three organizations—the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security; the Department of Geosciences of Oregon State University; and the Cooperative Monitoring Center (CMC) at Sandia National Laboratories—sponsored a workshop designed to highlight the closeness of national security and environmental concerns through explicitly comparing the technologies, institutions, and social issues in two seemingly disparate fields: arms control and transboundary water resources. With generous support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, “Fire Water” workshop participants compared and contrasted these two fields and then identified questions for further analysis. Workshop sessions focused on three specific topics: (a) scientific and technological advances, (b) treaties and institutions, and (c) social and cultural issues.
Topic:
Security, Environment, Migration, and Poverty

712. In Defense of Environment and Security Research

Author:
Richard A. Matthew
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War, many policymakers and researchers have been rethinking and pushing the boundaries of the definition of security. Perhaps the most extensive and controversial part of this project has been the numerous and varied attempts to identify links among environmental change, conflict, and security. But concern has recently been raised about whether a decade of environmental security research, debate, and policy experimentation has produced worthwhile results. This article argues that such concern is premature. Environmental security has (a) reinvigorated important elements of security research and policy; (b) made pioneering contributions to understanding the shifting sources of global violence and the changing requirements of security; (c) contributed to a broader debate about the social and political effects of transnational change; and (d) been a conceptual and political boon for the environmental movement. Now is the time to build on these gains instead of abandoning them.
Topic:
Security, Environment, Migration, and Poverty
Political Geography:
United States

713. Security and Ecology in the Age of Globalization

Author:
Simon Dalby
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
The environment has emerged as a major theme in the post-Cold War discussion of human security. There has been a considerable amount of detailed empirical work on the relationship between environmental change and likely conflicts. This article argues that, while the interconnections between the environment and conflict are many and complex, the likelihood of large-scale warfare over renewable resources is small. Nonetheless, environmental difficulties do render many people insecure. A parallel conceptual discussion suggests that the empirical work of environmental security research needs to be placed in the larger context of global economic changes and large-scale urbanization of a growing humanity. This urban population increasingly draws resources from rural areas, disrupting indigenous populations. All these dynamics are also complicated by the rapidly increasing scale of human activities, which has induced a level of material- and energy-flow through the global economy that is a new and substantial ecological factor in the biosphere. Given the scale of these processes, societies should carefully consider these interconnections and reduce their total resource throughput to improve environmental security and develop sustainable modes of living for the future.
Topic:
Security, Environment, Migration, and Poverty
Political Geography:
United States

714. Migration, Population Change, and the Rural Environment

Author:
Richard E. Bilsborrow
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
This article considers issues pertaining to the linkages between rural populations, migration from and to rural areas, and the environment—focusing on developing countries in the latter part of the 20th century. The article concentrates on internal migration, although it does briefly discuss the state of knowledge on the interplay between international migration and the environment. It addresses questions such as: What are the recent—and projected—patterns of rural population growth? How much internal migration in developing nations is towards rural environments? What kinds of rural environments are people moving into, in what countries, and what are the environmental consequences? Are there relationships in the other direction as well—that is, does environmental deterioration play an important role in out-migration from rural areas? And does out-migration from rural areas have environmental effects on the places of migratory origin? The article concludes with policy recommendations.
Topic:
Security, Environment, Migration, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Europe and Asia

715. Population, Poverty, and Vulnerability: Mitigating the Effects of Natural Disasters

Author:
George Matrine and Jose Miguel Guzman
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
Hurricane Mitch was one of the most destructive natural disasters of recent times, and it exposed the underlying vulnerability of the Central American region, where poverty magnifies the threat of natural hazards. International assistance for national disasters tends to focus on short-term recuperation rather than on long-range prevention. Policymakers need to pay greater attention to the role of population dynamics within necessary prevention efforts. This article analyzes the relationships between demographic dynamics and Hurricane Mitch in Central America, and extracts from that experience lessons that can help reduce vulnerability to natural disasters in the long run. Specifically, it centers on three aspects: How did demographic processes condition the area's vulnerability prior to Mitch? What are Mitch's consequences for population dynamics in the short- and long-term? How must population dynamics change in order to mitigate the effects of future natural disasters? Systematic use of such information could help blunt natural-disaster impacts in three important ways: planning of spatial organization, reproductive health needs, and design of adequate information systems.
Topic:
Security, Environment, Poverty, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Central America and Caribbean

716. Ownership and Conditionality

Author:
Natalino Ronzitti
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
Conditionally, ownership or empowerment, and partnership are terms and concepts that have long been used in the context of North-South relations, both in connection with cooperation and development aid and with trade, economic relations and even, although to a lesser extent, external relations. They are not always understood in the same sense; the notion of partnership has different meanings when applied to relations between groups of nations (e.g. in the case of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership) and when it is used to describe the links between unequal partners, particularly in connection with development aid and, in general, the processes aimed, in the context of North-South relations, at improving the relative position of southern countries in the international environment.
Topic:
Economics, International Organization, International Political Economy, and Poverty

717. Inequality and Risk

Author:
Marcel Fafchamps
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
There has been a lot of interest in the risk coping strategies of the poor in the recent literature but little work on the relationship between these strategies and inequality (Fafchamps 1999). Some have begun to suspect that certain risk coping strategies further impoverish the poor (e.g. Dasgupta 1993, Sen 1981). Labor bonding and debt peonage are examples that have been discussed in the literature (e.e. Srinivasan 1989, de Janvry 1981). Patronage, that is, the protection of the poor by the rich in exchange for labor and services, is also suspected of perpetuating poverty (e.g. Platteau 1995, Platteau 1995, Fafchamps and Quisumbing 1999).
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Poverty

718. Redistribution Does Matter Growth and Redistribution for Poverty Reduction

Author:
Hulya Dagdeviren, Rolph van der Hoeven, and John Weeks
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Recent development literature has placed priority on poverty reduction, and on possible growth enhancement from a more equal distribution of assets and income. At the same time, empirical work consistently shows that economic growth is no more than distribution neutral. In that context, this paper explores the relationship among growth, inequality and poverty, and demonstrates the following general conclusions: 1) a redistributive growth path is always likely to be superior to a distribution neutral path ('trickle down') for reducing poverty; 2) a redistributive growth path is always superior if a country's per capita income and inequality are relatively high; and 3) a static redistribution from the rich to the poor is superior to a redistributive growth path in its effect on poverty for most countries, but not for all. The paper then considers policy that might be used to make growth more equitable.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Government, and Poverty

719. The Stakes in the Presidential Election in Colombia

Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
This presidential election (first round on 26 May 2002; second round, if needed, on 16 June) will be crucial for the future of Colombia's democracy and its struggle against insurgents and paramilitaries, drugs and widespread poverty. Social and economic distress is now widespread. Public frustration with the ill-fated peace process of the Pastrana Administration over the past three years, its definitive rupture on 20 February 2002, and increased attacks by the main rebel group, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia- Ejército del Pueblo (FARC) on civilians and infrastructure since mid-January have made “war/peace” and “violence” the key vote- determining issues. The failure to negotiate a solution to the longstanding civil war over the past three years has polarised the electorate.
Topic:
Security, Politics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, and Latin America

720. Globalized and Localized Digital Divides Along the Information Highway: A Fragile Synthesis Across Bridges, Ramps, Cloverleaves, and Ladders.

Author:
Carl Cuneo
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
There has been a tendency, especially in North America and Europe, and among technology enthusiasts and some educators, to assume that the whole world is connected to the Internet, and surfs the World Wide Web. Why would we use the term, 'World Wide Web', if we were not talking about a global phenomenon? However, Internet statistics show that only about six to eight percent of the world's six billion population is connected to the Internet. Approximately ninety-two percent of the world is NOT connected to, nor uses, the Internet. 1 The erroneous assumption of universal connectivity is not simply a statistical mistake. Governments, corporations, community organizations, and individuals make many incorrect decisions, with sometimes dramatic and far-reaching consequences, on the basis of the assumption that most of the world is connected to the Internet. Not only is the vast majority of the world not connected to the Internet, most people do not even have the computers, skills, experience, interest, or awareness to become connected. The disconnected are not randomly distributed, but have specific demographic, social, economic, racial, ethnic, gender, gerontological, and political characteristics that amount to a systematic bias of exclusion, often referred to as the “digital have-nots”. Similarly, the connected are not randomly distributed, but possess particular demographic, social, economic and political characteristics making up what has become known as the ““Digital Haves””. The separation, chasm, abyss, canyon, gulf, or distance between the ““Digital Haves”” and “digital have-nots” has become known as the “Digital Divide.”
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Globalization, Poverty, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Europe and North America